All You Do Is Talk, Talk

By Dennis Bernstein, MBA
Photos: William Trillo

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.” – German philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche

Las Vegas – From the chatter coming out of Las Vegas the past few weeks, you would have thought that the light heavyweight bout between Antonio Tarver and Chad Dawson was the second coming of Ali-Frazier I. Tarver won the first battle staged, the pre-fight war of words prior getting into the ring at the Pearl at the Palms this past Saturday. I’ve met Tarver in the past and one on one, he’s personable and charismatic. So while he may be over hyping his talents (a loss to Bernard Hopkins and three marginal and lackluster performance against Elvir Muriqi, Danny Santiago and Clinton Woods), he’s good for the sport because he create heat before a match. Dawson, the quiet fighter from Washington, DC has slowly been building his body of work. I witnessed his three round destruction of unknown Jamie Hearn on the undercard of the Joe Calzaghe-Jeff Lacy card and that victory was a precursor to him capturing the WBC light heavyweight strap against Tomas Adamek in February 2007. He went on to defend the title three times but had the misfortune of facing cagey veteran Glen Johnson his last time out. Fighting in Johnson’s adopted state of Florida, Dawson won the but unanimously on all three judge’s cards 116-112 but the crowd in attendance vociferously voiced their disagreement. While Dawson piled up points in the early going, Johnson imposed his will in the last three rounds, hurting the champion in the 10th and winning the championship rounds as well. So while he defended his title in the toughest bout of his career, doubt entered the collective mind of the boxing public (and Tarver’s too) about the toughness and his ability to compete at the top of the division.

Tarver tells you that he’s competed and the highest level and won, referencing the two wins over Roy Jones, Jr. as evidence of performing when the lights were the brightest. While his mouth is one of the best in the business, I give Tarver credit for being able to forget the past pretty easily as well. Antonio had a rougher go of it against the aforementioned Johnson, losing a split decision to him in December 2004 before avenging the loss six month later in Memphis. While Tarver strode to the ring with a three fight winning streak to boost his confidence, he faced an opponent 13 years younger than him, an age difference rarely seen. And while there’s more tread on Tarver’s tires by virtue of having only 31 professional fights (27-4), it’s a lot to ask a guy who turns 40 next month. Since you can’t beat any fighter with your mouth, Tarver’s best hope was to use his guile, his experience of his battles with Jones and Johnson to beat the unbeaten Dawson. So while he will tell you his words were a tool to get inside Dawson’s head, Chad will say that he made the miscalculation of making it personal. “This fight has gotten personal,” Dawson said. “I don’t like that dude. I won’t like him after the fight and I won’t like him two years from now. He irritates everyone. All people keep telling me is to shut his mouth up. That’s what I intend to do.”

Dawson came out with a fire intended to show that the Johnson fire was an aberration. He threw punches in bunches, effective combinations with found their mark through Tarver’s guard more often than not and more frequent as the fight went on. Chad was faster, stronger and generally more effective, knocking down Tarver to close the show in the 12th round with an overhand right that may have been more elbow than fist but referee Jay Nady let the knockdown stand. Tarver gamely fought back in the final seconds to continue his streak of never being stopped but it was all in vain. I scored the fight 118-107 in favor of Dawson and the judges were in agreement; their tallies were 118-109 (Max DeLuca) and two 117-110 totals (Dave Moretti and C.J. Ross). This performance may actually hurt Dawson’s future options, if Joe Calzaghe was watching it’s doubtful he’d want a shot at him, Bernard Hopkins is not an option either and the other contenders (or actually pretenders) at 175 would be fodder for the new IBF titleholder. The best fight may be a rematch with the aforementioned Johnson, the man that’s given him the most difficulty in his 28 bout career but a more curious fight may not come for a few years when Kelly Pavlik or Paul Williams grow into a 175 pound weight.

Dawson was his usual low key self in the ring afterwards, “I was playing him, outworking him and out pointing him one round at a time, that’s our philosophy.” Dawson’s trainer Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, a former light heavyweight champ himself was impressed by his fighter’s efforts, “the strategy was to keep turning on him and use his old legs. He used the plan to perfection.”

Tarver was disappointed but not muted afterwards, “I should have had a busier work rate, and I blocked a lot of those punches. I didn’t land the left but I have a lot of other weapons and used him. Chad fought his fight and I fought mine. He was busier and I felt I was better defensively. He pushed me down on that knockdown, I tried to score a knockout because I knew I was behind on the cards but it didn’t come. I was never hurt, as you can see I’m not busted up or hurt and I’d like to fight him again.”


Emeritus Shmeritus

Two words can sum up how this fight got done: Boxing politics.

It seems as if you’re a WBC and you retire because you get injured too often to fight, you get to come back and immediately fight for your title through the double secret probation status of “champion emeritus.” It was almost four years since Vitali Klitschko TKO’d Danny Williams in Las Vegas to defend his heavyweight title. It wasn’t age or deterioration that forced Klitschko from the ring but the persistence of back injuries that caused cancellation after cancellation of potential fights for him. With his financial situation set, Vitali stepped away from the ring to pursue other interests like running for the mayoral post in the city of Kiev, Ukraine. Real life politics proved to be far more difficult than boxing as Vitali loss his bid for office. Lacking anything better to do, Vitali went to WBC Jose Suliman and reminded him of a promise made in some back room like they do in real politics. I can think of two reasons that Suliman might make good on this alleged promise: 1) he remembers Vitali as the fighter who bravely fought Lennox Lewis five years ago or 2) he confused Vitali with his brother Wladimir and gave him the title shot. Either way to let Klitschko come back to fight for the title without even one tune up (a match in Moscow against Oleg Maskaev would have brought big bucks from some Russian petro billionaire) is wrong on every level. Even if you dislike Samuel Peter’s fighting style, the way he clubs punches, his constant hitting behind the head, he has improved every fight and is a much more accomplished fighter than the one that lost to brother Wladimir in 2005 despite knocking him down three times. He went to war with James Toney twice, winning both a controversial and clean cut decision and rallied after going down against Jameel McCline. His dogged two year pursuit of the WBC title culminated this spring in Cancun where he systemically broke down Maskaev on way to a sixth round TKO, his finest performance to date. Although Peter weighed in at 253.5 pounds, he looked in excellent shape and made the taller Klitschko look scrawny at 6’7” 247 pounds. Give credit to Peter for willing to go anywhere in the world to defend his title, the match was stage at the O2 Arena in Berlin, a home court of sorts for the Klitschko brothers (why Germans embrace the Ukrainians is another political discussion for another time). As the days grew closer to the match and it appears that Vitali would go through training camp unscathed, Peter realized that it was a fight in which he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. He was testy at the press conference, grabbing his title belt out of Vitali’s hands when they posed with it and called out the former champ, “Vitali Klitschko is trying to take my title belt from me. He tried to take it out of my hands at the press conference, but I snatched it from him. He is a phony who is messing with my career and my life. On Saturday, he will be out of everyone's life for good.”

But at the end of 24 minutes in the ring, it’s debatable who had a worse week, Samuel Peter or Kimbo Slice. Klitschko, taking a page out of his brother’s book, fought tall, kept his distance and was able to mount a two fisted attack. He won every round decisively; to such a degree that Showtime blow by blow announcer Steve Albert called the match, “a glorified sparring session,” in the later rounds. Vitali navigated the eight rounds unscathed and unmarked with the final ignominy for Peter the image of him quitting on his stool before the start of the ninth round. “For a guy who claims he’s been disrespected throughout the entire promotion, Samuel Peter certainly didn’t fight like a disrespected fighter,” Showtime’s color commentator Al Bernstein succinctly characterized the effort. For all the chirping Peter did in the days leading up to the fight, the last thing he should have done was to quit on his stool without even going down once.

Vitali’s future plans are unknown, he didn’t commit to fighting further while hinting that a dream of the brothers is to hold all four heavyweight straps simultaneously. On this night, they made history becoming the first siblings to hold a heavyweight championship belt at the same time. The image of Don King smiling at ringside may hold the answer to the next move by either brother. King holds the promotional rights to WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev and a match against either Klitschko would be gigantic in Germany.

As for Peter, the first thing he needs to do is get with his manager Ivalo Goetzev and fire his corner men. Stacy McKinney and Pops Anderson were as culpable for Peter’s performance as was the fighter; they offered little help between rounds and their strategy was flawed at every point. Peter was unable to close the distance the entire night and remarkably there were no clinches in the eight rounds. Vitali kept his left hand low and that begged for an overhand right response that never came. It was obvious strategy for any fighter that watched tape of the Wladimir match yet Peter was clueless the entire night. The Peter team needs to reach out to a more capable trainer or he’ll never reach the heights he’s ascended to. So the morale of the story this night may best stated by former President Teddy Roosevelt who once uttered the words, “speak softly but carry a big stick.”


13th Round

After witnessing Sugar Shane Mosley’s last second KO of Ricardo Mayorga, he should put away any thoughts of facing Antonio Margarito. Mosley’s performance was that of an aging fighter and he pressed by HBO’s Max Kellerman about a future fight with WBC welterweight strap holder undefeated Andre Berto, Mosley begged off and said, “he reminds me of a younger me.” The fact is that there is no other fight for the former two time world champion Mosley, all his options are exhausted. He wouldn’t be competitive against the top of the division (Margarito, Miguel Cotto and even Joshua Clottey) and a fight against the lesser lights (Zab Judah and the other pretenders) wouldn’t sell any tickets. Any way you look at it, the spelling comes out R-E-T-I-R-E-M-E-N-T for gentleman Shane. And for all his accomplishments and stirring victory over Cotto, Margarito now stands as the ducker and not the duckee. Missing out against a major payday against Oscar de la Hoya, the obvious fight for the welterweight king is to go avenge his loss against Paul Williams. Perhaps after seeing Williams back to back first round KO’s against Carlos Quintana and Any Kolle, Margarito might want to fight Stevie Forbes because after all, Forbes is a great guy. That’s what you say when a guy doesn’t have any talent, ‘you’d love him, he’s a great guy!” I don’t see the sense in doing a rematch with a guy you already beat when a guy who beat you is willing to give you $ 4 million for the right. Williams did exactly that when he took a snooze the first time around against Quintana only to bust him out in only 2:15 when he got serious ……The NON-retirement talk coming out of De la Hoya’s mouth caused not by his willingness to keep competing in the ring but rather his desperation to keep Golden Boy Promotions alive. P4P’s main man, Bill Trillo documented the failure of the Mosley-Mayorga promotion, a half empty Home Depot Center with probably no more than a couple of thousand tickets sold. The reality is and always has been that when the Golden Boy fights, GBP makes primo dollars, while every other promotion they do languishes because of de la Hoya and CEO Richard Schaefer’s inability to build a successful promotion…..There isn’t a better venue to see a fight in Vegas than the Pearl. There’s not a bad seat in the house in the 1,800 seat theater that is primarily used for concerts. After seeing many events at the pit known as the Thomas and Mack and with the poor sightlines of the aging MGM Grand Garden Arena, I highly recommend taking in the next card that is staged there. Not only is it a very comfortable environment but the quality of the cards (I’ve seen Judah-Clottey and Tarver-Dawson) makes is a great evening for even non-boxing fans….The feature brought out a good crew of notables including Winky Wright, Cristobal Arreola and Paulie Malignaggi…..